By KENNEDY GRIFFIN
(Greenfield, MA) The Greenfield Public Schools Food Service Director Greta Shwachman has been awarded the 2022 Kale Blazer award by Senator Jo Comerford. Every year this award goes to an individual who demonstrates leadership in farm-to-school initiatives in Massachusetts.
Shwachman has been the food service director in Greenfield for under a year and has already increased participation in the school lunch program with healthy, local foods. Leading with the motto, “Real School Food For Hungry Minds” Greenfield Public Schools are spotlighting local foods with meals like homemade minestrone soup with kale from Czajkowski Farms in Hadley and croissant breakfast sandwiches with Vermont Salumi, a producer of handmade charcuterie based in Barre, Vermont. She has also implemented taste-tests to get students trying new foods.
Senator Comerford said, “Our kids and our staff and faculty benefit from nutritious produce locally grown. Then, of course, our farms and our food systems benefit when we invest in them.”
In a statement from Massachusetts Farm to School, Erin Healy, Director, Office of Community Food Systems, USDA, said, “farm to school has multiple benefits, health benefits, economic benefits, and educational benefits. [It] reaches beyond the school environment and helps create jobs for our local farmers… for every $1.00 spent on local food an additional $0.86 is spent in that local economy.”